Smart Business Magazine, Jun 2012

June 2012 Smart Business Pittsburgh 13 Pittsburghs health care landscape has been anything but boring and for Robert Rogalski that statement holds very true The health care lawyer turned health system CEO has been surrounded by industry change and talk of mergers and acquisitions ever since returning to the area in 2009 Rogalskis entrance into the CEO role at Excela Health was rather nontraditional The former counsel for University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and West Penn Allegheny Health System was asked to join the board of directors at Excela a 4800 employee 500 million health system Just a few months later he stepped in as interim CEO and took the job permanently in 2010 Five years earlier Excela had undergone a merger of four hospitals Latrobe Westmoreland Fricke and Mercy Jeanette Mercy Jeanette has since closed but the other three remain open and it has been up to Rogalski to continue the long process of unifying those cultures into one We had difficulty fitting together the cultures of Latrobe Hospital and Westmoreland Hospital and I think the biggest challenge is trying to find common ground to build upon to develop a common culture for the new entity Rogalski says Like any merger there tends to be a little bit of push and pull in terms of which culture is going to succeed in a merger Unlike many mergers or acquisitions where the incoming company adapts to the culture of the acquiring business Rogalski and Excela didnt want to force one particular culture upon the new entity and instead are looking to form a culture made up of best practices What we found here is that there was a sense of lost in terms of the culture and what weve attempted to do through a series of planning exercises is weve tried to define a new culture for the system rather than adopt one culture or the other Rogalski says Here is how Rogalski has helped bring together three systems and form a common culture for future success Evaluate the culture With Rogalski at the helm and a new board also in place the first task at hand was to get together and evaluate the type of culture they wanted to set up for the new entity As a board exercise we sat down and tried to establish the culture that we would like to see Rogalski says When we studied it and spent time at the board establishing it it really came down to a lot of fundamentals that included patient convenience quality of care and patient experience At the center of it was How do you design systems that are the most patient friendly Cultural care ROBERT ROGALSKI WAS SERVING AS A BOARD MEMBER FOR EXCELA HEALTH WHEN HE WAS ASKED TO BE INTERIM CEO AS THE BOARD SEARCHED FOR A FULL TIME REPLACEMENT THE HEALTH SYSTEM HAD UNDERGONE A MERGER OF THREE OTHER SYSTEMS AND SOON DISCOVERED THAT THE MAN THEY PUT IN CHARGE TEMPORARILY WAS THE MAN THEY WANTED TO LEAD THE ORGANIZATION ON A PERMANENT BASIS NOW HE HAD TO IMMERSE HIMSELF IN DEVELOPING A SINGULAR UNIFIED CULTURE BY GREGORY JONES gjones@ sbnonline com

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